| Summary: | This thesis examines the nature of the transformations engendered under the impact of the demands of the state and European merchants' . capital within the colonial political economy of Northern Nigeria until 1939. It examines, in'particular, the effect 'of these transformations upon three groups: the peasantry, the merchant class and the aristocracy. It is placed within the current debate on the nature and impact of European capital, operating within an imperial framework, on the political economy of colonies. It seeks to analyse the dialectical effect of the intercourse of European merchants' capital with peasant producers, indigenous merchant and an indigenous ruling class incorporated within the colonial system of administration. Beginning with an examination of the basic pre-colonial economic structures (peasant and slave agriculture, long-distance and internal trade and manufacture) it analyses the immediate effects of the subordination of the pre-colonial state structure under the colonial state, and of the colonial states' policies towards land;~labour and taxation. It then examines peasant involvement in the increased'. production of export commodities, and the role of European, Levantine and African merchant capital in the trade. It then examines the effect of this involvement on the structUre of peasant relations of production, and finally examines the implications of intensified export commodity production within the wider context of a maturing colonial economy. It concludes that the twin demands to ensure initial political control and financial solvency by the state combined with the existence of a form of capital that intensified pettycommo~ ity production to create in Northern Nigeria a state system centred around:a class of non-producers, committed to a controlled, guided change, dependent upon surplus from a peasantry, and class relations that aimed at perpet~ating the political subordination of the peasantry. Material for the thesis vas gathered from actual sources in the' National Archives,'Kaduna, Nigeria, Public Records Office in London, and from published boQks and journals from the University of Sussex, England.
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